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Here's Kropotkin's take on all this in his article "Organised Vengeance Called 'Justice'":

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So-called Justice is a survival from a past serfdom based, for the interest of the privileged classes, on the Roman law and on the ideas of divine Vengeance.In the history of society, organisation of Vengeance under the name of Justice is coterminous with the State; they imply one another; they were born together, flourished together and are doomed to perish together.Coming from an age of serfdom it helps to maintain serfdom in present society; through its police, prisons and the like, it is an open sore, throwing out a constant stream of purulence into society, a far greater evil than the one it is supposed to fight against.Any society founded on better economics than ours will certainly come also to the conclusion that it is unwise to keep any punitive institution.The way of doing without it will be found in voluntary arbitration, in greater effectual solidarity, in the powerful educative means which a society will have that does not leave to the policeman the care of its public morality.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

Given the fact the SPGB rules disallow funds to be sent abroad

Actually, it's not the rules as such but a Conference resolution that was passed in 2006:

Quote:

This Conference rules that the Party shall cease sending money grants to overseas groups or individuals, but shall continue to give every assistance to socialist activities abroad by way of printing and dispatching campaign material from Head Office.

This was a surprise result in that most delegates spoke against it (after all, we are an internationalist party that stands for socialism on a world scale) but it was carried by a majority of members voting later, no doubt because the Party had been recently scammed out of money by groups in the Ukraine and in Uganda.We have already received some offers and will now have to work out the precise means of co-ordinating these and sending the money collected.

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The pre-WW1 Social Democratic movement (from which we emerged) was opposed to the death penalty on principle. Here's the leftwing Russian Social Democrat Julius Martov's passionate denunciation of the Bolsheviks for abandoning the abolition of the death penalty which they had once called for:

Quote:

That Bolshevik party told you that socialists reject the death penalty, they reject the cold-blooded killing of unarmed criminals no longer capable of harm, they reject turning civilians into executioners, carrying out on court orders the foul business of depriving human beings, albeit criminal ones, of that greatest gift – life.That Bolshevik party told you then: so the Christian church, professing a religion of love for thy neighbour, hypocritically justifies the murder of a person by the state authorities and the state courts when it suits it. Socialism will never stoop to such hypocrisy, and will never use its religion, the religion of fraternity of working people, to sanctify the cannibalistic principle of the death penalty.

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jondwhite wrote:

Weekly Worker have agreed a rather mawkish open letter to the ISN (ex-SWP)

Quote:

Message to ISNDear comradesThe fight for a mass Communist Party, organised along the lines of the pre-1917 Bolsheviks and solidly based on a Marxist programme, is vital.

Bolloxskeviks. Like a hole in the head.

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jondwhite wrote:

SPEW have […] also argued against signing women in the labour movementhttp://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/16503/11-04-2013/combating-violence-against-women-a-socialist-perspective-on-fighting-womens-oppression

Actually, this SPEW statement against signing the 'women in the labour movement' document is not too bad and makes some good points against it as well as against anti-men feminism and no platformism, including this one:

Quote:

However, in saying "We therefore believe that, when women complain of male violence within our movement, our trade unions and political organisations should start from a position of believing women" the statement bends the stick too far, effectively arguing that the workers' movement begins by concluding the man is guilty, regardless of the evidence, or lack of it.Instead the statement should say that trade unions and political organisations should start from a position of taking all claims of violence made by women very seriously, and carrying out a thorough investigation, in a way that is sympathetic to the woman making the accusation.

This is the same point that was made when it was discussed here on this forum and at our EC meeting.As to the incident that has led to a resignation, I can't see that it has any political significance whatsoever. I certainly don't think we should use it to try to make some political capital out of it.

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In his article Colin quoted from what Rosa Luxemburg wrote about workers' co-operatives in chapter VII of her Reform or Revolution pamphlet:

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Co-operatives – especially co-operatives in the field of production constitute a hybrid form in the midst of capitalism. They can be described as small units of socialised production within capitalist exchange.But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.

What can we add to this except to say that the experience of workers' co-operatives since she wrote this in 1900 bears out her contention?

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jon brown wrote:

I also do not discount that a socialist society may democratically decide that there should be a death penalty for paedeophiles.

I'm not too sure about this, in fact I'm not sure about it all. I take it you would only be talking about someone who killed as well as sexually assaulted kids. But personally I can't see socialist society restoring a penalty which even most capitalist states have abandoned. More likely that such a very rare person would be restrained by being confined somewhere.

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colinskelly wrote:

A Wolff in Marxian clothing.

I like it. The trouble is that his video When Capitalism Hits the Fan is well presented and even got a favourable reception when it was shown at one of our party meetings in Clapham so he has some standing amongst critics of capitalism (it actually gives an underconsumptionist theory of the crisis which we wouldn't accept but is still good general anti-capitalist material and only mentions his "workers cooperatives" hobby horse in passing).We've been battling against this idea of workers control of the market system for ages, going back to old Solidarity Group (a breakaway Trotskyist group which came to abandon vanguardism) in the 1960s and 197os. I see that somebody has recently reproduced our 1969 article on them on their blog:http://forworkerspower.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/the-solidarity-group-not-so-solid-spgb-1969/So others agree us on this. Anyone know who this blogger is?

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colinskelly wrote:

And the practical outcome? The fruit that has been borne of these 40 years of efforts?  Workers Self Directed Enterprises.  Glorified bloody co-ops.  No thanks.

Yes, that's just what Michael Moore advocates at the end of his film Capitalism: A Love Story and he doesn't feel any need to justify this in "Marxist" terms. In fact he comes to it from a Christian/Catholic view. It's no solution of course and certainly isn't socialism.

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Shouldn't that be "will a police service" rather than " will a police force"  exist? Surely, whatever survives or is adapted wouldn't be a "force" as this implies some sort of repressive function which couldn't exist in socialism.

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Incidentally, Stephen Resnick died this January:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_ResnickWhich makes me wonder whether the picture of him on page 17 of  this month's Socialist Standard is really him or at least when it was taken.

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Here is a list from  our Socialist Standard archive of articles and debates with the "International Socialism Group" which became the SWP in 1977. They deal with the theories of the "IS tradition" (that Russia was state capitalist but only after 1928, the so-called permanent arms economy, their entryism in the Labour Party up until about 1970) amongst other things:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1964/no-721-september-1964/book-review-russia-marxist-analysishttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1966/no-744-august-1966/old-myths-refurbishedhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1968/no-770-october-1968/book-reviews-western-capitalism-war-theories-imperhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1968/no-769-september-1968/confusionhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-790-june-1970/productivity-dealshttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-791-july-1970/debate-%E2%80%9Cinternational-socialists%E2%80%9D

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Alexander Reiswich wrote:

As for your denial of ownership – I don't really want to defend property rights here, but I can't help but point out the fallacies in your argument.First of all, ownership is derived from use and the labour that went into acquiring it.

You do realise don't you that this argument can be, and frequently has been, used as an argument for socialism, i.e. the social rather than individual ownership of the means of production and their products on production?Production today is almost entirely social involving ultimately the co-operative labour of workers all over the world. Just think of the the everyday things you use and the food you eat. The only individual act of production today is the example you give of someone picking fruit from a (wild) tree. Hardly typical of production generally. As production is social then, on your principle that property rights derive from labour, so ought the products to be. It is not a line of argument we use, but that's where it leads.This was always the contradiction in the labour theory of individual property — it could be used to justify the exact opposite of what its proponents intended.  Which is why it was abandoned and replaced by the argument that private property in the means of production is justified because that's what the law permits. Which of course is a circular argument.

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So, you are saying that Thatcher was the personification of what capitalism in Britain required in the 1980s: an iron fist to push through policies that weakened the unions (and so workers' ability to resist a worsening of their conditions) and cut social spending both to allow profitability to be restored so that capitalist growth could continue? And that once this had been done her style of government no longer met British capitalism's requirements; which made it possible for "the men in grey suits" to remove her? Sounds plausible, but I'm not sure who "the someone else who would have done be" would have been.

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EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is a classic which is recommended reading. But this doesn't alter the fact that he advances a different theory of class to the one we have tended to use. We say that a/the working class exists whether or not those in it recognise it, something similar to what Marx meant by a "class-in-itself". Thompson seems to start from the assumption that a class only exists if and when its members see themselves as belonging to it.This is not the same as Marx's class-for-itself, i.e when a class is consciously acting in its own interest because Thompson's theory does assume this, merely that people should see themselves as a class. It would be something nearer to what Lenin described as "trade union consciousness" (which included "labour representation" and demands for "labour legislation").His theory gives rise to various problems. For instance, what are those who are objectively members of a class but don't recognise it? A mob? A mass? A what? An important theoretical question given that this is the position of many, perhaps a majority, of members of the working class-in-itself today. I suppose this will come out at the Conference.Having said this, it is an important field of historical study to trace the emergence of "class consciousness" amongst some workers and Thompson's does this very well.

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